Obama’s remaking of America

Anyone who believes America’s culture wars are behind her should have started out Friday reading The Washington Times.

The headlines on the three top stories on page one read:

“California judges asked to say if they are gay.”

“‘Tebow Bill’ for home-schoolers dies in Virginia Senate panel.”

“Opt-out on birth control defeated in Senate.”

The California judges story dealt with the lately passed Judicial Appointments Demographic Inclusion Act, which mandates a survey of all of the state’s 1,600 judges — to find out how many are homosexual.

Purpose of the law: “Promote and increase the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the … judicial branch.”

The questionnaire sent to the judges asked each to identify themselves by race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.

Forty percent of the judges balked, refusing to reveal their sexual orientation. One percent said they were gay. One percent said they were lesbian. One judge identified himself as transgendered.

Welcome to 21st century America.

Under the old American ideal, the lawyers who proved the most qualified by wisdom and experience were to be elevated to the bench.

The new ideal is that California’s judiciary should mirror the diversity of the state. Whites, Asians, Hispanics, males, females, blacks, gays, straights and bisexuals are to be represented on the bench in the proportion that they are found in the population.

Yet another triumph of diversity over excellence.

Were an Olympic team or symphony orchestra to be chosen on the basis of this kind of diversity, they would be a joke.

The “Tebow Bill,” named for Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, who played high school football while being home-schooled, was crafted to allow home-schooled Virginia kids to try out for the tennis, football, baseball and basketball teams at their local high schools.

The Virginia House approved the measure 59-39.

But a Senate panel sank the Tebow Bill on an 8-7 vote, denying 38,000 Virginia home-schoolers their last chance to play high school sports. Every Democrat on the panel voted as the Virginia Education Association dictated.

But it is the top story in the Times, about the 51-48 defeat of the Blunt Amendment, that best reveals the shifting correlation of forces in the religious and cultural wars sundering the country.

The amendment of Sen. Roy Blunt would have assured Catholic institutions and Catholic employers of their freedom to opt out of providing health insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients and sterilizations for employees, if they have religious objections.

The position of the Catholic Church on this issue is neither new nor is it unknown. It was reaffirmed in 1968 in the famous encyclical “Humanae Vitae” of Pope Paul VI. Artificial birth control is unnatural and immoral. This is high among the beliefs that differentiate Catholic teaching from other Christian faiths.

Nor is it any secret. And any government that orders Catholic institutions and employers, against their religious beliefs, to provide contraceptives, “morning after” pills or sterilizations for employees has crossed the line between church and state to trample upon the First Amendment religious freedom it was established to protect.

Sandra Fluke, a 30-year-old student at Georgetown Law School, has emerged as the heroine of the Democratic establishment, being phoned by President Obama after her excoriation by Rush Limbaugh.

And what is Fluke’s demand? That Georgetown University pay for and provide birth control for herself and all coeds and law school students.

Consider if you will the chutzpah on display here.

Fluke attends one of the most prestigious law schools in America. She is among a cognitive elite whose future is secure. Why should she not pay for her own birth control, even if she has to borrow money? Why is providing her birth control someone else’s obligation?

This is not an abandoned woman on welfare. Why should other students or the university be forced to foot the bill for Fluke’s exercise of her freedom to pursue her personal lifestyle? She has talked of $3,000 a year being the annual cost of birth control for a Georgetown student.

Georgetown University and its law school presumably remain Jesuit institutions. For Fluke to demand contraceptives or birth control pills for herself and her fellow students is to demand that Georgetown enable and subsidize behavior the church and the Jesuit community teach to be immoral.

Fluke has an extraordinary sense of entitlement.

Undeniably this episode, where the Democratic Party, traditional political home of America’s Catholics, is now demanding that Catholic institutions and employers be forced to subsidize what their church teaches to be immoral conduct, tells us much about the sea change that has taken place and is taking place across America.

The America of Barack Obama that is emerging appears to be a country where civil disobedience may yet become a duty of traditional Christians and devout Catholics.

The historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. once called anti-Catholicism “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people.”

A recently published book written by a Skvere hasidic rabbi and endorsed by the Skvere Rebbe himself tells Skvere hasidim and other Jews to hate all gentiles. Gentiles are wholly evil, the book says. They spiritually pollute the world, and even looking at their faces is harmful.

The astonishing website, run by Jews who reject Jewish extremism, failedmessiah .com has the full story:

The book is called Yalkut Shaiylos u’Teshuvos. As the title indicates, it is a collection of questions and answers on halakhic topics. The questions were asked by young Skvere yeshiva students in New Square, New York.

The answers are rabbinic.

The section translated below is titled, “Goyyim” and it explains the Skvere hasidic view of non-Jews, citing among other sources, the Skvere Rebbe himself.

The anti-gentile hatred is based on rabbinic sources. Those sources are heavily influenced by kabbalah and by hasidic thought.

A similar attitude toward non-Jews can be found in the Tanya, the so-called bible of Chabad hasidic thought written by the first rebbe of Chabad, Schneur Zalman of Liadi, and reprinted thousands of times by Chabad worldwide.

The translation was made by the noted filmmaker Menachem Daum, who sent it to me along with the scans of the book posted below and requested that I post it.

All remarks in square brackets [ ] are Daum’s. All remarks in these brackets { } are mine. All text within normal parenthesis ( ) are the book’s author’s.

Question: Is it appropriate to not love, or to hate, a gentile?

Answer: A Jew is intrinsically good. A Jew is a part of God above. Even if at times he strays it is not because he has become evil. It is only that there is evil within him that he has to cleanse.

However, to separate with a million degrees of separation, a gentile is an impure thing. The entire essence of the gentile is evil and impure. Even if he occasionally does good deeds he does not thereby become good. As the Holy Light of Life {i.e., the author of the book Ohr HaHayyim] says regarding gentiles, even such a one who is very careful in his actions does not obtain any degree of holiness thereby.

As is also well known, even educated gentiles who guarded themselves because of their clear understanding of what is right, nonetheless failed when they were tested, because a gentile has no power for goodness within him.

On the contrary, the evil thoughts of gentiles contaminate the world’s atmosphere and create ordeals for Jewish children. As the Remnant for Pinchos {i.e., the author of the book Sheairit L’Pinchas} says, the thoughts of gentiles, even when they are dead, still linger in and contaminate the atmosphere.

He says that to be protected from this there is only one solution; to completely despise the thoughts of gentiles and to realize that all their thoughts are only evil. (Hate doesn’t mean wanting to do something to a gentile, but it means not being able to tolerate him, not being able to stand him, because of his great impurity, especially when one realizes how harmful this {impurity} is {to Jews and to the world}.)

Understandably, loving a gentile is the exact opposite of this.

The Holy Light of Life {i.e., the author of the book Ohr HaHayyim} says that for a person to be totally protected from evil he must hate the thing that has caused him to sin. This is why God commanded to uproot the trees of Midian. Since the Midianites caused the Jews to sin with the Peor idol, so therefore Jews must hate everything connected to Midian. Consequently, gentiles, whose thoughts bring upon us ordeals, may be hated.

So also the Holy Light of Life {i.e., the author of the book Ohr HaHayyim} writes, in the portion of Vayigash {in his book entitled Oh HaHayyim}, that the nature of the righteous ones is to hate gentiles.

Speaking of gentiles it is worth mentioning two points. First, with respect to conversing with a gentile: a gentile is impure, as we have mentioned, and he defiles one who speaks to him and this brings evil upon a person. (Except when one is forced to do so because then, as is explained by the Enlightener of the Eyes {i.e., the author of the book Me’or Eynayim}, we thereby extract the little bit of good which has fallen into the gentile, since everything in the world is a mixture of
evil and good.)

Especially if one converses with friendship, because the texts tell us that when two people speak with affection then a portion of each one’s soul becomes connected to the other and no one wants to become connected to a gentile, God forbid. (Understandably, when one must
converse one must do so like a human being. However, in his heart one should not love him. And it is worth knowing that “it is a well-known law that Esau [the gentile] hates Jacob [the Jew].”

The gentile hates you. It is only because of his ulterior motives that he is talking in a friendly manner, because it is in his best interests to do so at this moment, because of his job or for tens of others reasons. Even the righteous gentiles among the nations are often so because they hate
inhumanity and murder but not because they love Jews.)

The second point is; one is not to concentrate on the face of a gentile. As the Willows of the Valley {the author of the book Arvei Nahal} writes on the Talmudic passage, “it is forbidden to look upon the face of an evildoer”, because the other side [the devil] {the sitra achra} cloaks himself in the guise of an evildoer and it is a danger to look at him. This passage refers to a Jew who has, God forbid, become an evildoer. Certainly, beyond any doubt, a gentile whose whole nature is essentially evil, looking at his appearance is defiling.

In the Abbreviated Set Table {Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh} it states that if one sees beautiful creatures, even a gentile, one makes a blessing.

The Abbreviated Set Table {Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh}adds this is only if one caught a casual glimpse, however concentrating on a gentile is forbidden.

Once, in middle of the night, The Perfumed Bed {the author of the book Arugot Haboshem} sent a messenger to his son, the Jacob Speaks {i.e., the author of the book Vayagid Yaakov}, requesting he should immediately come over. He quickly came running and the Perfumed Bed {the
author of the book Arugot Haboshem} looked upon him and told him he can now leave. He only called upon him since a gentile doctor was there earlier and he didn’t want that the last thing he sees before he sleeps to be a gentile, so he called him only to take a look at him.

Our Honorable Holy Teacher, Our Master, Our Guide, Our Rebbe [of Skver], may he live a long and good life, repeated in the name of the Maharal that gentiles are referred to as “wicked waters” while Jews are akin to fire. Naturally, when fire and water mix the water extinguishes the fire.

However, when there is an iron barrier between them, for example, water in a pot, then on the contrary, the fire cooks and evaporates the water. Similarly, if one has connections to a gentile the
gentile can, God forbid, extinguish the fire in the soul. However, if one is separated in all matters then the Jewish soul will triumph.